Haimbuchner rejects allegations and targets state leadership in 2027

Manfred Haimbuchner, leader of the Freedom Party of Austria in Upper Austria and the state’s deputy governor, has rejected allegations linked to a housing allocation affair and filed a lawsuit against the daily newspaper Der Standard, ORF reported. In an ORF Upper Austria summer interview, he also set out his ambitions for the 2027 state election.

Haimbuchner files lawsuit over housing reports

Reports have alleged that an unusually large number of party officials and associates received apartments in a residential building in Linz, including two people linked to the FPÖ. Haimbuchner rejected any responsibility, saying that as a member of the state government he had nothing to do with the allocation of apartments.

He filed a lawsuit against Der Standard on Tuesday. Haimbuchner said he normally did not take legal action, but would not accept what he called a campaign of defamation. He also warned that other outlets would face lawsuits if they published inaccurate claims in the future.

Haimbuchner defended an ongoing review by an auditing association as a sign of transparency and said the matter would be examined fully, possibly beyond what some people expected. Asked whether the public would ultimately learn whether the allocations had been handled correctly, he replied: “Of course.”

Coalition remains stable despite tensions

Haimbuchner described cooperation with the Austrian People’s Party as stable, despite disagreements. ÖVP state councillor Dörfel recently criticised the term “remigration” in the Upper Austrian daily newspaper OÖ Nachrichten.

Haimbuchner said he did not care whether the policy was called remigration, deportation or removal from the country, arguing that consistent action was what mattered. He said only 49 Syrians and Afghans had been deported between January and May, while more than 2,000 Afghans had arrived in Austria during the same period.

He also rejected the Interior Ministry’s description of asylum applications as being at a 10-year low. Nearly 500,000 migrants had come to Austria over the past decade, he said, adding that calling the current figure a low was “arithmetically very easy.”

Haimbuchner defends Germany’s AfD

Commenting on the AfD’s strong result in Saxony-Anhalt, Haimbuchner referred to the will of voters. Upper Austrian Governor Thomas Stelzer had warned that the German party’s opposition to the euro and support for isolation could put jobs in Upper Austria at risk.

Haimbuchner took a different view, saying it should be a democratic necessity for citizens to vote out a government if they were dissatisfied with it. He declined to name any red lines regarding Germany’s AfD and described it as an “alternative for the bourgeois centre”, at least in eastern Germany.

Conservative parties needed to accept that voters wanted different policies, he said. “The voter is right, not the politician who criticises the voter,” Haimbuchner said.

Climate policy should focus on adaptation

Haimbuchner acknowledged the severity of the record summer, which GEOSPHERE Austria has described as the hottest since measurements began, as well as the drying up of rivers such as the Mattig. His response was adaptation rather than climate legislation.

He called Austria’s federal climate law, which aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2040, “madness”. Asked about the fact that the FPÖ’s state parliamentary group had itself adopted a climate strategy with the same target in 2023, Haimbuchner said a strategy was different from a law because the goal had not been written into legislation.

He dismissed the argument that inaction also carried costs, including hail damage of one billion euros this year alone. “The carbon tax will not cause one more drop of rain. This trade is an indulgence trade,” he said.

FPÖ aims to become strongest party in 2027

Haimbuchner described the 2027 state election as an open contest for the governor’s post. Independent polls currently put the FPÖ clearly ahead of the ÖVP, which he regarded as a realistic starting point.

If the FPÖ became the strongest party, it would be a democratic necessity for it to provide the governor, he said. Referring to his statement on 1 May that there would be a “proper shock” in 2027, Haimbuchner added that the election in Upper Austria would also send a message to Vienna and mark the beginning of the federal government’s end.